My First Kickstarter

So I launched my first Kickstarter last week and it was quite the experience. The design process was obviously the first part we focused on and I can honestly say that at the beginning of this project I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do… but with some help from peers and making things like mood boards I was able to figure out something I am interested in, things that are kind of ugly. So I followed that up by trying to think of something that has an audience and that is how I got to cars!

After figuring out what I wanted to base the future product on I thought I wanted to do postcards and started designing what these prints would look like, but after asking some people about the idea I was brought to the realization that maybe the group of people who would use postcards isn’t the same as the ones who would be involved in such a specific car community. So it was back to the drawing board. I knew I didn’t want to just ditch these car illustrations that I had made and I didn’t want to change the subject, and that is when I got the idea of coasters.

I made them just big enough to hold your average sized can or bottle the set of 6 coasters each have an interesting looking car from the 1950’s through 2015!

I’m fortunate enough to have access to a laser engraver at home so I purchased some cork sheets from the hardware store and I tested sizes and laser powers until I found one I was happy with.

Finally! I got the perfect scale down! Now it was time to make a set and put them on Kickstarter. Putting together the campaign wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. Thanks to the finances sheet given to us by our professor I was able to quickly figure out how much I needed to charge for the sets. I put the campaign together, got the approval from Kickstarter, and on September 27th, 2018 I launched my first Kickstarter! The first thing I did after launching was post it all over social media, which benefited me by helping me get my project funded in under an hour! The feeling of seeing people who are interested in your project and are outside your normal friend group is incredible.

Now, as I am writing this my project has been 212% funded and I have set things up to start manufacturing them for my backers. I am also in the process of getting things ready for my next Kickstarter campaign that is launching in our spring semester, so more will be posted here soon!